I know i'm supposed to "contribute to the conversation" but it's important to recognize that the above point is exactly right.
There’s no grand conspiracy where executives are helping boost the holdings of REITs and institutional investors. Executives as a “class” and a “job” just like the traditional butts in chairs approach to work. They have to think about the entire company and it’s easier to have a singular approach. Instead of bespoke approaches by team/department/title where some people are RTO and some WFH as that quickly reverts to everyone is on zoom/teams for every meeting because of the remote people.
WFH has also provided a whole host of new and unusual problems for HR. I’m sure most executives are just tired of hearing about it. In my own experience/approximation only about 1 in 3 people are can actually self manage in a way that’s needed for remote work to be effective. I think software development is a very specific job that is very well suited to WFH but most other jobs within a company are not.
I don't buy it.
Headlines don't support this, articles only get clicks when celebrating remote work. But there is a very clear disconnect where headlines are saying "remote work is more productive" and executive surverys are saying "we are moving back to offices".
Execs (on the whole, not anecdotes) don't hate money and productivity. If remote work was so much better, they would be rushing to it at breakneck speed. Instead the opposite is happening.
HN Note: Only a small fraction of workers are developers or work in IT. The white collar workforce is huge an varied. The remote vs. RTO debate is about workers on the whole, not just the small sliver that are devs.
RTO is dictated by those people because without the headcount in the office it's plain and obvious that most of their "work" is illusory and provides no value beyond giving them means to build their kingdoms. RTO is mostly about self important and self-preservation of this whole class.
I think you are trivializing a pretty huge risk on the global markets.
I’ve worked with/on dozen or so executive teams, public and private, bought sold RE and leased/renewed RE at most of them. Nobody cares about the landlords or the shareholders of those companies. It’s actually an adversarial relationship just like most tenant/landlord relationships. Each party is looking out for themself.
The math makes no difference when all you care about is yourself. The executives are wanting RTO because they feel like that’s what’s in their company’s best interest. I’m not buying into the grand conspiracy theory that’s floating around.
To me, it is all so simple. Does the micro manager to a fault know they are a micro manager? Of course they do but they can't help it. It is strategic and a trade off. It is the same exact thought process but just applied at the company level.
"Of the billions in tax incentives granted to US companies every year by cities and states, many agreements require workers to come into the office some of the time, or at least live in the region. For companies receiving these incentives, relaxing in-office attendance could be costly."
"New Jersey paused its on-site requirement when Covid hit. Last summer, though, the state announced that companies receiving those benefits must bring employees back to the office about three days a week — a lower bar than before, but still challenging for firms struggling to hang onto workers in a red-hot labor market."
"The state [of Texas] said it will revoke benefits granted under the multibillion-dollar Enterprise Zone Program to companies whose employees no longer work on site at least half the time."
The article does go into pushback the states are getting from companies for imposing these, to be fair, but it's clear they have some levers to pull in order to coerce companies to bring employees back to the office.
[1]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2023-02-21/another-t...
https://fortune.com/2023/07/06/remote-workers-less-productiv...
But I won’t make that argument because it is the third rail of HN comments. So I make all my arguments assuming WFH improves productivity.
So yeah, I am told to subsidize failing real estate without getting anything in return. Won't I think of the poor, poor investment managers and their real estate? Why would I? Do they think about me?
Could it be that the board members of these companies are in that nebulous investor class?
Many companies would benefit financially by reducing their office footprint and thereby paying less rent. The idea that boards everywhere would sabotage their own companies to appease commercial real estate investors is tinfoil hat level stuff.
If you notice that companies make similar decisions as a result of changing market trends (a global pandemic, for instance) it’s probably because those decisions were deemed the most financially sound. They weren’t colluding to screw over employees.
Like saying "you better support your employer's aims or maybe grandma wont get her cancer medicine," is not the gotcha you maybe think it is.